I am just tired
on
Hacker Culture
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I wish there was a book that did an enertaining job of chronicling the culture surrounding the people that made the IT world what it is today that did not refer to HACKERS, get them mixed up with CRACKERS and did not play exclusively to the culture of personality around Gates and Jobs.
Sure, Gates and Jobs should play a big part in chronicle of history around the progress in the computer industry and software industries, sure. However, what about Bill Joy, Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie?
They played a big part too. It was not in the PC world sure but it impacted Universities and Corporations on a very large scale. What about talking over the rise of Open Source in a way that did not either make it sound like a magical revolution cheering it forward as the only future or making sound like some horrible fifties commie plot? What about going over it in a detached objective fashion while still capturing the personality and excitement people have?
I am still looking for a good history of the Hacker/IT/Computer Revolution that takes in interesting truly balanced approach.
The problem is a bit more complex than the article suggests. Cost is a big problem for me since I just moved into a new house and do not want to double my monthly costs for ISP service.
However, there is also the fact of limited choices. I have a choice between one DSL and one Cable service available in my area. Some people only have one Cable or one DSL or even no choices in their areas. The availibility and lack of choices between providers and therefore a lack of competition also comes into play and impacts prices directly.
What if I hate my Cable provider but find they are the only ones with broadband in my area? Maybe there is no one company doing DSL in my area or that one company has a bad rep for customer service, etc...
Even in the burbs of large metro areas the choices are not dizzyingly large but dismally small.
Will they follow the Cobalt Cube approach since they already have it or will they go another route?
The Cobalt Cube looked very cool in their little blue cases. I did not see in the article if they were going to be intel or sparc based.
I am not going into the basic Wintel bashing stuff but I hope it does well simply because it gives consumers more choices even if those products are focused primarily at educational and corporate users.
They have been working on a similiar project called Aethera for awhile.
What has happened to this project?
I use Evolution everyday and found it very nice. The screenshots of Aethera look really nice and the interface from this screenshots look pretty damn intuitive.
There needs to be a show focused on the progress of technology and the computer world that does not focus on consumer advice, or How To's.
A chronicle of where we are going and how we got here in terms of computers in our society would be very nice.
Oddly, the article in the link focused mostly on how the show is being distributed. He mentions interviews with people that did not make it into Nerds1 and 2 but not much else about the content. I hope that Cringley remembers the contents the thing and not the distribution. However, I liked Truimph of the Nerds 1 so I hope the show does well.
Fine, the three hours or so it takes to compile that damn monster known as mozilla will now be worth more than just giving me a big old browser. Personally, I have to see the apps that are produced. It seems like another invitation for GNU GUI redundancy.
(i.e. Does the world need one more freaking ftp client this time based on the mozilla model?)
I don't think so. There are a half dozen choices for GUI libraries for free operating systems as it stands right now. The world does not need one more. I understand that there will be differences in philosophy behind widget and app libraries but come on. Choose QT, GTK, GNUstep or now Mozilla libraries to base your calls on. Yuck.
Considering the bloat of the mozilla app as it stands now and how it takes as I said before so long to compile just the browser I would shudder at the thought of a desktop based on this model.
It is funny to me. So many people comment that they were too young to remember these ads. I was born in 1969 (an old fart I guess) so I remember most of them. The day has come when I am retro (old school).
I learned BASIC on a Trash80. I had an Atari 2600 and later the Atari 800 computer and played Star Raiders thinking it was the bomb and remembering how it stayed in the top ten for Computer games sales forever. I played games that came on tape drives start the load and go to dinner and a movie (sorta like I do when I start a mozilla compile now).
My first PC was a 386SX (for SUX) and I remember when I first got online at my local BBS at 2400 baud thinking it was lightening fast.
I remember working of the Mac SEs in the education labs. So much good GUI sense in such a little package. A fully functional GUI OS on diskspace half of what some PDAs have now.
Jeez, I remember loading linux for the first time and I thought it was enough to have a quick machine with a Unix-like OS. I did not even care about the fancy desktops and GUI eyecandy.
Give me a break, WordPerfect is still more functional as a word processor. The interface is better and the placment for items in the menus and the toolbars are more functional.
You don't have to know any function keys or know how to read the reveal codes. Every tester in the software development labs I met prefer the interface of the WordPerfect app itself. Many still like Excel over Quatro Pro and would be lost without NT so they are not exactly anti-Redmond. They test lots of Office apps for creating documents in their testing.
I used WordPerfect8 in Linux and on Windows for awhile and liked it a lot. Try out a recent version and you may be surprised. If you have the chance, get a copy and use for a week when you have a few things to type up. ________________________________________________ _
Woh! I love vi and use it exclusively. I got use to it because I had to edit things on multiple boxes with no standard configuration.
"editing things on the fly" became second nature and using vi became second nature by default. I do not consider vi lightweight it can do some very neat things.
Listen most programmers I know use emacs and love it. They love the features and they are use to the interface. fine.
Yet, I am a sysadmin at heart and when it comes to editing things on the fly. vi is everywhere. It does not matter what way-old silly box sitting in the corner that I find vi is there. Sometimes I get stuck on windows box for a second and find myself hitting the ESC key. HA!
I do not why things have to always have to be so heated. If you know and like emacs use it otherwise set EDITOR=vi and be done with it.
People use different tools for different tasks sometimes because one is better than the other. Sometimes it is a just a matter of personal choice. Why this is so hard to understand is beyond me.
Listen I was not to hot on the idea of a company relying on wine to run windows games on linux. I liked the idea of companies already doing ports to other OSes (like Hyperion though their experience was not good) creating a few linux ports along side their Mac ports or whatever. That way they still had steady income and were less fragile than a linux only company.
I know by the way that being linux-only was not what killed Loki.
This move has me re-thinking Transgaming. I will probably buy some of the Kohan games. If I was a big gamer I would probably be subscribing and trying out some of the Windows titles on top of their wineX or whatever it is.
Count me as a linux user that is grateful when a company backs the OS.
At least someone is trying a tactic to finally get beyond the STANDARD desktop model. Instead with this setup you have a combo concept where you have a desktop model merged into a home page model. I doubt if you can count it as revolutionary but at least they tried to push the edge a bit.
For an end user I think it might actually be better than some lame approach of merely emulating a windows desktop on top of linux the way a couple of distros seem to be going like the Lindows stuff.
What would be interesting to see is how a real life end user would react to such a setup.
A story about games in linux means only the following responses will be posted:
1. The games sucks. All games released for linux sucks to Slashdotters that is what put Loki out of business according to most Slashdot readers. (I really like Alpha Centauri and Heroes3 but obviously I was in the minority.)
For some reason this makes folks feel better about the fact they do not get the game, or the fact they play their games on windows.
2. Windows fans bantering on about how they have never once rebooted the Win2000 or XP box running the game server at the same time that they play their games while the linux folks wait../er's are all a**holes to these people yet they still post to slashdot.
These are probably the same people that litter posts about how every other story is really not news for nerds and should not be included on slashdot. Stop freaking reading it then, geez.
3. I can't hardly wait and those guys actually doing the linux port are sh*theads for not moving faster to get the port out. Always willing to kick a company supporting linux these folks will spend paragraphs complaining that the commercial company is not moving fast enough or are evil for not getting out quicker.
Let me just say that I personally play games on a windows box I keep around for just that. I also buy linux games when I like something that is out. MythII, Alpha Centauri, Heretic II (mistake) and finally Heroes of Might and Magic III. I have not gotten Castle Wolfenstein but I want to get NWN and I have heard some good things about this thing.
Obviously I have read the posts and I am considering the negative remarks. Still, as part of the linux-using community I am glad that some companies take the time and care to do a linux release even if it is much later than the windows version. I prefer Linux and going to my windows box to play games is a pain.
Your problems with sites supporting IE only depend a lot on what sites you frequent. I hit sites dealing with Unix, Linux and some odd news sites.
I have not had a major problem with site content itself. Sure, I do not have the Crossweaver's plugin for viewing QuickTime but if I did I would pretty much be in the clear for all sites I view in terms of seeing the content available.
I worried a bit when my wife started using the KDE desktop I set for her but Opera has done her right.
The biggest issue I have has been with IE and more precisely windows based web apps on my company's intranet. In fact, this has been the biggest problem for most people using a *Nix desktop in the corporate environment.
Out there in the wild of the WWW world I have not hit this problem.
The hype is dead and the OS lives on...
on
Is Linux Dead?
·
· Score: 2
The worst thing that happened to Linux was the pre-bust notice it got in the press and all the insane IPOs that followed. The hype is dead.
That does not mean that Linux is not continuing to be deployed across the IT landscape. Will it quickly become a Windows-killer replacement for XP in end-user's homes? Hell no.
Does it mean that linux is useless on the desktop. Heck no! There are geeks that live primarily in an Unix world for development jobs, System Admin jobs and other IT positions that need a cheap *Nix desktop to work from. This is where linux with a large number of applications and stability shines on the desktop. To bad, that the linux distro companies have no clue about this. If this was not a viable way to make money then desktop X packages like Exceed would go out of business and Unix workstations made by HP and Sun would never be built.
As for the server outlook anytime someone needs an inexpensive machine running for a project critical task that does not require some oddball COTS product Linux will be considered. I know because I work for Software Development company and I see the uses everyday.
Linux is not dead. Windows is not dead. Mac is not dead. Hyperbole is alive and well and living at MSNBC and many other news organizations.
The funny thing is that I have to be a part time programmer to get any sort of baseline control out of CVS. Why? Because it is what it says it is.
CVS is versioning control not a tool for complete configuration management.
It is not difficult to keep baseline control over a project with tagging models and proper procedures. However, your cm better come to you with a proper background in scripting at the very least. I am a former sysadmin myself.
For CVS to go beyond its parameters and become a tool for real software control takes some scripting and working.
My goal in terms of giving back to the community is to come up with a standard set of tools for tagging and tracking source code files over a large project. Currently my tools are far to project specific to be of use to the general community. My thought was to expand upon a tool like cvsweb for ease of use.
I have no idea if bitkeeper is any better than CVS for total software control but I will be doing some research as soon as the interview is not slashdotted.
If I am not mistaken, the comics code authority was established after Spiderman debutted (correct me if I am wrong please).
However, even during this oppresive reign, Spiderman pushed the edge of the code's envelope in every possible way. Flash Thompson who was Peter Parker's High School nemesis went to Vietnam. Yes, a comic book character went to 'Nam and they talked about the anti-war protests too!
Not only that but Harry Osbourne was a druggie who dropped a tab of bad acid. After the Green Goblin found out who Spiderman was and that Harry and Peter were friends it only led to a psychopathic move where the Green Goblin blamed Peter (and therefore, Peter) for all his son's troubles.
Add to this the fact that Spiderman was hunted as a criminal for awhile and you get some interesting stories.
Oh yes, Gwen Stacy who happened to be Peter's first big love dies when she is chunked off the Brooklyn Bridge. Before this, important even peripheral characters rarely died and never died in this kind of dramatic fashion.
At every turn Spiderman pushed the edge of the Comics code and out of it came a story that in many ways more socially significant and relfective of the times than the bland Superman and Batman comics of the time could ever dream of being until Denny O'Neil got ahold of the Batman franchise in the seventies.
Gnome does not necessarily even have a built-in browser for its desktop. Galeon gives you the option of being the default browser but does not have to reside on the same system with the rest of the desktop. Nautilus is the same way. If you still use GMC you have no built-in browser sucking up space.
I thought with KDE you did not HAVE to have Konquerer though it is by default the file manager/browser for KDE. There are other file managers that can be used with KDE that do not have built-in browsers I think.
I understand fully that KDE and GNOME are desktop environments for the Linux OS. Even so, even if the desktop could be considered the OS, his examples still do not apply.
Am I wrong on this or is this guy just the clueless MIT professor ever?
This is not a Troll I would actually like to know if I am wrong.
I use to use Balsa which was a fine email client for standard email but I have moved over to evolution for one reason, the integration of contact information and palm support in the Ximian version.
I like being able to sync up with my palm and have all my contact info reflected in my email client. The task and calendar functions work very well too. My company uses Notes but supports pop3 so I am set. Ximian I hope is working on a Notes connector. That would be the best.
Evolution is a very slick app. My only criticism is the adherence to UI standards based off the bloated slow Outlook model and the fact there is no easy way to insert and html document even while sending html based emails. This sounds like a silly thing but our timesheets are online and if I want to give my consulting company my status it is much easier to insert the html into an email than to send an attachment.
I totally agree. I will preface my statement by saying I am personally not a Mac person. However, this makes my point more pertinent IMHO because I am a Unix and Linux person. I have worked in IT almost 7 years.
Many Mac persons love their computer. Therefore, they tinker and work and enjoy their computers a great deal. This leads to a technical comfort level with their machine that many times matches the equivalent skills for many PC users.
There are plenty of PC home users that have no clue about how their computers work. They surf the web, get their email and open their Word docs and they are happy. However, there is that other edge of users that tinker, upgrade and know how to manipulate their PC in imaginative ways.
Saying "Mac users are clueless artsy types with no technical knowledge" is as clueless as saying all PC users are clueless Office clones blindly following everyone else's lead.
I was very glad to hear that most distros installed on the machine with no trouble I was thinking about getting one these things myself.
I hear some people painting the winmodem experience as typical but I have used the ltmodem packages on four different machines with great results. Below in some of the comments it is explaining that this particular one is a chipset that is not really supported. Still, the ltmodem modules work great for the winmodem in my Dell 4000 right now.
What I like is that he did not just install one distro and let it go at that. He installed multiple distros which gives a reviewer a much nicer base of experience to speak from.
Read carefully his experiences with the install. It just goes to show linux installs are getting much easier and autodetection is very good.
There are still gotchas (his was the modem) but anyone not using Windows pre-loaded from the manufacturer to work with that machine will come up with at least one install gotcha. My gotcha was the free Umax scanner that came with my laptop. Xsane still has no driver for it because of Umax's bull-headedness. The funny thing is that Dell started selling the Epson 1250 after that and I hear they work great with Linux. Argh!
Slashdot Mirror
I wish there was a book that did an enertaining job of chronicling the culture surrounding the people that made the IT world what it is today that did not refer to HACKERS, get them mixed up with CRACKERS and did not play exclusively to the culture of personality around Gates and Jobs.
_ _
Sure, Gates and Jobs should play a big part in chronicle of history around the progress in the computer industry and software industries, sure. However, what about Bill Joy, Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie?
They played a big part too. It was not in the PC world sure but it impacted Universities and Corporations on a very large scale. What about talking over the rise of Open Source in a way that did not either make it sound like a magical revolution cheering it forward as the only future or making sound like some horrible fifties commie plot? What about going over it in a detached objective fashion while still capturing the personality and excitement people have?
I am still looking for a good history of the Hacker/IT/Computer Revolution that takes in interesting truly balanced approach.
Does anyone have a good example?
_______________________________________________
Aethera is out there and I barely understand why the KDE folks don't put their full effort behind it instead of rolling their own.
_ _
I barely understand this because it is not officially a KDE program but a QT program. Still, how many times does that darn wheel need re-inventing?
If the source is available shouldn't there be a way to get the program to tie into KDE better as opposed to figuring out a whole new approach?
Does anyone know the reasoning behind this?
_______________________________________________
The problem is a bit more complex than the article suggests. Cost is a big problem for me since I just moved into a new house and do not want to double my monthly costs for ISP service.
_ _
However, there is also the fact of limited choices. I have a choice between one DSL and one Cable service available in my area. Some people only have one Cable or one DSL or even no choices in their areas. The availibility and lack of choices between providers and therefore a lack of competition also comes into play and impacts prices directly.
What if I hate my Cable provider but find they are the only ones with broadband in my area? Maybe there is no one company doing DSL in my area or that one company has a bad rep for customer service, etc...
Even in the burbs of large metro areas the choices are not dizzyingly large but dismally small.
_______________________________________________
Will they follow the Cobalt Cube approach since they already have it or will they go another route?
_ _
The Cobalt Cube looked very cool in their little blue cases. I did not see in the article if they were going to be intel or sparc based.
I am not going into the basic Wintel bashing stuff but I hope it does well simply because it gives consumers more choices even if those products are focused primarily at educational and corporate users.
_______________________________________________
They have been working on a similiar project called Aethera for awhile.
_ _
What has happened to this project?
I use Evolution everyday and found it very nice. The screenshots of Aethera look really nice and the interface from this screenshots look pretty damn intuitive.
Has anyone ever used Aethera?
How does it stack up to Evolution?
_______________________________________________
There needs to be a show focused on the progress of technology and the computer world that does not focus on consumer advice, or How To's.
_ _
A chronicle of where we are going and how we got here in terms of computers in our society would be very nice.
Oddly, the article in the link focused mostly on how the show is being distributed. He mentions interviews with people that did not make it into Nerds1 and 2 but not much else about the content. I hope that Cringley remembers the contents the thing and not the distribution. However, I liked Truimph of the Nerds 1 so I hope the show does well.
_______________________________________________
Fine, the three hours or so it takes to compile that damn monster known as mozilla will now be worth more than just giving me a big old browser. Personally, I have to see the apps that are produced. It seems like another invitation for GNU GUI redundancy.
_ _
(i.e. Does the world need one more freaking ftp client this time based on the mozilla model?)
I don't think so. There are a half dozen choices for GUI libraries for free operating systems as it stands right now. The world does not need one more. I understand that there will be differences in philosophy behind widget and app libraries but come on. Choose QT, GTK, GNUstep or now Mozilla libraries to base your calls on. Yuck.
Considering the bloat of the mozilla app as it stands now and how it takes as I said before so long to compile just the browser I would shudder at the thought of a desktop based on this model.
_______________________________________________
It is funny to me. So many people comment that they were too young to remember these ads. I was born in 1969 (an old fart I guess) so I remember most of them. The day has come when I am retro (old school).
I learned BASIC on a Trash80. I had an Atari 2600 and later the Atari 800 computer and played Star Raiders thinking it was the bomb and remembering how it stayed in the top ten for Computer games sales forever. I played games that came on tape drives start the load and go to dinner and a movie (sorta like I do when I start a mozilla compile now).
My first PC was a 386SX (for SUX) and I remember when I first got online at my local BBS at 2400 baud thinking it was lightening fast.
I remember working of the Mac SEs in the education labs. So much good GUI sense in such a little package. A fully functional GUI OS on diskspace half of what some PDAs have now.
Jeez, I remember loading linux for the first time and I thought it was enough to have a quick machine with a Unix-like OS. I did not even care about the fancy desktops and GUI eyecandy.
Give me a break, WordPerfect is still more functional as a word processor. The interface is better and the placment for items in the menus and the toolbars are more functional.
_ _
You don't have to know any function keys or know how to read the reveal codes. Every tester in the software development labs I met prefer the interface of the WordPerfect app itself. Many still like Excel over Quatro Pro and would be lost without NT so they are not exactly anti-Redmond. They test lots of Office apps for creating documents in their testing.
I used WordPerfect8 in Linux and on Windows for awhile and liked it a lot. Try out a recent version and you may be surprised. If you have the chance, get a copy and use for a week when you have a few things to type up.
_______________________________________________
Woh! I love vi and use it exclusively. I got use to it because I had to edit things on multiple boxes with no standard configuration.
_ _
"editing things on the fly" became second nature and using vi became second nature by default. I do not consider vi lightweight it can do some very neat things.
I am a vi user.
_______________________________________________
Listen most programmers I know use emacs and love it. They love the features and they are use to the interface. fine.
_ _
Yet, I am a sysadmin at heart and when it comes to editing things on the fly. vi is everywhere. It does not matter what way-old silly box sitting in the corner that I find vi is there. Sometimes I get stuck on windows box for a second and find myself hitting the ESC key. HA!
I do not why things have to always have to be so heated. If you know and like emacs use it otherwise set EDITOR=vi and be done with it.
People use different tools for different tasks sometimes because one is better than the other. Sometimes it is a just a matter of personal choice. Why this is so hard to understand is beyond me.
_______________________________________________
Listen I was not to hot on the idea of a company relying on wine to run windows games on linux. I liked the idea of companies already doing ports to other OSes (like Hyperion though their experience was not good) creating a few linux ports along side their Mac ports or whatever. That way they still had steady income and were less fragile than a linux only company.
_ _
I know by the way that being linux-only was not what killed Loki.
This move has me re-thinking Transgaming. I will probably buy some of the Kohan games. If I was a big gamer I would probably be subscribing and trying out some of the Windows titles on top of their wineX or whatever it is.
Count me as a linux user that is grateful when a company backs the OS.
_______________________________________________
Acutally they run Solaris and use linux for a number of their cgi boxes and real media servers.
_ __ __
They used IPlanet for their web server software and apache was making headway.
_______________________________________________
At least someone is trying a tactic to finally get beyond the STANDARD desktop model. Instead with this setup you have a combo concept where you have a desktop model merged into a home page model. I doubt if you can count it as revolutionary but at least they tried to push the edge a bit.
_ _
For an end user I think it might actually be better than some lame approach of merely emulating a windows desktop on top of linux the way a couple of distros seem to be going like the Lindows stuff.
What would be interesting to see is how a real life end user would react to such a setup.
_______________________________________________
Actually they already have all come true if you bothered to look at the above posts.
A story about games in linux means only the following responses will be posted:
./er's are all a**holes to these people yet they still post to slashdot.
_ _
1. The games sucks. All games released for linux sucks to Slashdotters that is what put Loki out of business according to most Slashdot readers. (I really like Alpha Centauri and Heroes3 but obviously I was in the minority.)
For some reason this makes folks feel better about the fact they do not get the game, or the fact they play their games on windows.
2. Windows fans bantering on about how they have never once rebooted the Win2000 or XP box running the game server at the same time that they play their games while the linux folks wait.
These are probably the same people that litter posts about how every other story is really not news for nerds and should not be included on slashdot. Stop freaking reading it then, geez.
3. I can't hardly wait and those guys actually doing the linux port are sh*theads for not moving faster to get the port out. Always willing to kick a company supporting linux these folks will spend paragraphs complaining that the commercial company is not moving fast enough or are evil for not getting out quicker.
Let me just say that I personally play games on a windows box I keep around for just that. I also buy linux games when I like something that is out. MythII, Alpha Centauri, Heretic II (mistake) and finally Heroes of Might and Magic III. I have not gotten Castle Wolfenstein but I want to get NWN and I have heard some good things about this thing.
Obviously I have read the posts and I am considering the negative remarks. Still, as part of the linux-using community I am glad that some companies take the time and care to do a linux release even if it is much later than the windows version. I prefer Linux and going to my windows box to play games is a pain.
_______________________________________________
Your problems with sites supporting IE only depend a lot on what sites you frequent. I hit sites dealing with Unix, Linux and some odd news sites.
_ _
I have not had a major problem with site content itself. Sure, I do not have the Crossweaver's plugin for viewing QuickTime but if I did I would pretty much be in the clear for all sites I view in terms of seeing the content available.
I worried a bit when my wife started using the KDE desktop I set for her but Opera has done her right.
The biggest issue I have has been with IE and more precisely windows based web apps on my company's intranet. In fact, this has been the biggest problem for most people using a *Nix desktop in the corporate environment.
Out there in the wild of the WWW world I have not hit this problem.
Am I just sheltered in my web viewing?
_______________________________________________
The worst thing that happened to Linux was the pre-bust notice it got in the press and all the insane IPOs that followed. The hype is dead.
_ _
That does not mean that Linux is not continuing to be deployed across the IT landscape. Will it quickly become a Windows-killer replacement for XP in end-user's homes? Hell no.
Does it mean that linux is useless on the desktop. Heck no! There are geeks that live primarily in an Unix world for development jobs, System Admin jobs and other IT positions that need a cheap *Nix desktop to work from. This is where linux with a large number of applications and stability shines on the desktop. To bad, that the linux distro companies have no clue about this. If this was not a viable way to make money then desktop X packages like Exceed would go out of business and Unix workstations made by HP and Sun would never be built.
As for the server outlook anytime someone needs an inexpensive machine running for a project critical task that does not require some oddball COTS product Linux will be considered. I know because I work for Software Development company and I see the uses everyday.
Linux is not dead. Windows is not dead. Mac is not dead. Hyperbole is alive and well and living at MSNBC and many other news organizations.
_______________________________________________
Everyone muster their best Dr. Frankenstein voices and shout together....
_ __ __
It's Alive!!
It's Alive!!
_______________________________________________
The funny thing is that I have to be a part time programmer to get any sort of baseline control out of CVS. Why? Because it is what it says it is.
_ _
CVS is versioning control not a tool for complete configuration management.
It is not difficult to keep baseline control over a project with tagging models and proper procedures. However, your cm better come to you with a proper background in scripting at the very least. I am a former sysadmin myself.
For CVS to go beyond its parameters and become a tool for real software control takes some scripting and working.
My goal in terms of giving back to the community is to come up with a standard set of tools for tagging and tracking source code files over a large project. Currently my tools are far to project specific to be of use to the general community. My thought was to expand upon a tool like cvsweb for ease of use.
I have no idea if bitkeeper is any better than CVS for total software control but I will be doing some research as soon as the interview is not slashdotted.
_______________________________________________
If I am not mistaken, the comics code authority was established after Spiderman debutted (correct me if I am wrong please).
_ __
However, even during this oppresive reign, Spiderman pushed the edge of the code's envelope in every possible way. Flash Thompson who was Peter Parker's High School nemesis went to Vietnam. Yes, a comic book character went to 'Nam and they talked about the anti-war protests too!
Not only that but Harry Osbourne was a druggie who dropped a tab of bad acid. After the Green Goblin found out who Spiderman was and that Harry and Peter were friends it only led to a psychopathic move where the Green Goblin blamed Peter (and therefore, Peter) for all his son's troubles.
Add to this the fact that Spiderman was hunted as a criminal for awhile and you get some interesting stories.
Oh yes, Gwen Stacy who happened to be Peter's first big love dies when she is chunked off the Brooklyn Bridge. Before this, important even peripheral characters rarely died and never died in this kind of dramatic fashion.
At every turn Spiderman pushed the edge of the Comics code and out of it came a story that in many ways more socially significant and relfective of the times than the bland Superman and Batman comics of the time could ever dream of being until Denny O'Neil got ahold of the Batman franchise in the seventies.
_______________________________________________
Gnome does not necessarily even have a built-in browser for its desktop. Galeon gives you the option of being the default browser but does not have to reside on the same system with the rest of the desktop. Nautilus is the same way. If you still use GMC you have no built-in browser sucking up space.
_ __
I thought with KDE you did not HAVE to have Konquerer though it is by default the file manager/browser for KDE. There are other file managers that can be used with KDE that do not have built-in browsers I think.
I understand fully that KDE and GNOME are desktop environments for the Linux OS. Even so, even if the desktop could be considered the OS, his examples still do not apply.
Am I wrong on this or is this guy just the clueless MIT professor ever?
This is not a Troll I would actually like to know if I am wrong.
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I use to use Balsa which was a fine email client for standard email but I have moved over to evolution for one reason, the integration of contact information and palm support in the Ximian version.
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I like being able to sync up with my palm and have all my contact info reflected in my email client. The task and calendar functions work very well too. My company uses Notes but supports pop3 so I am set. Ximian I hope is working on a Notes connector. That would be the best.
Evolution is a very slick app. My only criticism is the adherence to UI standards based off the bloated slow Outlook model and the fact there is no easy way to insert and html document even while sending html based emails. This sounds like a silly thing but our timesheets are online and if I want to give my consulting company my status it is much easier to insert the html into an email than to send an attachment.
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I totally agree. I will preface my statement by saying I am personally not a Mac person. However, this makes my point more pertinent IMHO because I am a Unix and Linux person. I have worked in IT almost 7 years.
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Many Mac persons love their computer. Therefore, they tinker and work and enjoy their computers a great deal. This leads to a technical comfort level with their machine that many times matches the equivalent skills for many PC users.
There are plenty of PC home users that have no clue about how their computers work. They surf the web, get their email and open their Word docs and they are happy. However, there is that other edge of users that tinker, upgrade and know how to manipulate their PC in imaginative ways.
Saying "Mac users are clueless artsy types with no technical knowledge" is as clueless as saying all
PC users are clueless Office clones blindly following everyone else's lead.
The stereotypes on both sides have fatal flaws.
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I was very glad to hear that most distros installed on the machine with no trouble I was thinking about getting one these things myself.
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I hear some people painting the winmodem experience as typical but I have used the ltmodem packages on four different machines with great results. Below in some of the comments it is explaining that this particular one is a chipset that is not really supported. Still, the ltmodem modules work great for the winmodem in my Dell 4000 right now.
What I like is that he did not just install one distro and let it go at that. He installed multiple distros which gives a reviewer a much nicer base of experience to speak from.
Read carefully his experiences with the install. It just goes to show linux installs are getting much easier and autodetection is very good.
There are still gotchas (his was the modem) but anyone not using Windows pre-loaded from the manufacturer to work with that machine will come up with at least one install gotcha. My gotcha was the free Umax scanner that came with my laptop. Xsane still has no driver for it because of Umax's bull-headedness. The funny thing is that Dell started selling the Epson 1250 after that and I hear they work great with Linux. Argh!
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